


brobdingnagian

by you_idjits



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Hospitals, M/M, also dean is bi, bartender!Dean, brobdingnagian, but they meet and kiss and stuff?, firefighter!cas, obviously, sorry i don't really know what this is it was late
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 11:47:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3133295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/you_idjits/pseuds/you_idjits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas drives himself to the emergency room.<br/>It’s not so bad, really. A busted lip, a black eye. Broken wrist, maybe. He’s had worse dates.</p><p>Or, the one where Dean and Cas meet as strangers in the ER. Maybe they have more in common than a tendency to get in bar fights.</p>
            </blockquote>





	brobdingnagian

**Author's Note:**

> based off the tumblr prompt "“we both got in separate bar fights downtown and now we’re waiting in the ER comparing stories” from [this post](http://casfallsinlove.tumblr.com/post/96718185723)
> 
> TW: mentions of blood and minor injuries

Cas drives himself to the emergency room.

It’s not so bad, really. A busted lip, a black eye. Broken wrist, maybe. He’s had worse dates.

“It’s a busy night, sir,” says the nurse at the front desk. “If you don’t mind taking a seat–”

“That’s fine,” Cas says. He takes the first open seat, and oh, it feels good to sit down again. He cradles his bad wrist and closes his eyes to the fluorescent lights. The blood on his face is beginning to dry. Maybe he should go find a bathroom and clean up, take care of the bloody lip himself.

“So what’re you in here for?” asks the guy in the seat next to him. Just what he needs. Small talk at midnight in an emergency room.

“Bar fight.” He keeps his eyes closed and his face tilted to the ceiling.

“No kidding?”

“Does it look like I’m kidding?” He cracks an eye – the bruised one.

“No, it’s just – me too, that’s all.”

“What?” Cas straightens up and looks him over. Late twenties, probably. Would be handsome if not for the… Black eye, broken lip, and swelling wrist. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” He laughs, then stops suddenly. “Ah, shit. That feels like a cracked rib or two.”

“A bar fight,” Cas says. Truth be told, this man looks exactly the type to get in bar fights. “Downtown?”

“Yeah, the Roadhouse. You know the place?”

“No,” Cas says. Then, maybe because he’s too tired to think it through, he says, “I’m Castiel. Cas.”

“Dean,” he says, and holds out his right hand to shake. Cas laughs, because his right hand’s busted, and holds out his left.

“Oops,” Cas says. Dean laughs, and then they do this thing that’s less like a handshake and more like holding hands. With a stranger.

It’s been a strange night.

“I’m a bartender,” Dean says, “down at the Roadhouse. That’s why I’m, you know.”

Cas looks at him a little more closely, now. Dean has a nice face and a nicer smile. Hazel eyes, maybe closer to green. In another context– _no_. The emergency room is not a place to pick up men.

Except, he can’t help it. He’s curious now. “So, what happened?”

Dean laughs. “Well, it’s a hell of a story. These two dumbasses get into it – they’re both plastered – so of course I go to break it up, and then one of them swings at me. So then they both decide to, I dunno, put aside their differences or something, lucky for me. Now I have to fight them both off. And they’re – I mean, they’re huge, think brobdingnagian. Swear to God, I deck one of these guys and he doesn’t even flinch. It’s a fucking free-for-all. Then the other bartender, Jo – and imagine it, she’s about yea high and 115 pounds _wet_ – she gets out the shotgun. Cocks it, says, ‘Hey, assholes, get out of my bar!’ That cleans things up pretty quick.” Dean leans back in the cheap plastic seat, smile cracking his face wide open. He looks– satisfied, maybe.

“You’re right,” Cas says. “That is a hell of a story.”

“Yeah, well, my wrist’s fractured at best, which means a cast, so there goes my work at the garage for a couple of weeks. Bobby’s gonna have my ass. As if Ellen wasn’t bad enough–” Dean stops and glances back at Cas. “Ah, sorry. Rambling to a stranger, right.”

“It’s fine,” Cas says. “I could use the distraction.”

Dean slouches further in his chair. He’s got blood along the side of his face, but Cas sees freckles underneath. Oh, God. This is not going to end well for Cas.

“What about you? No offense, but you don’t really look like the barfighting type. Nor the bartending type.”

“I’m not a bartender,” says Cas. “Not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m actually a firefighter.”

Dean’s smile slips right off his face. “Gah.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s. Um. That’s cool.” Dean swallows, hard. His eyes flick down, then back up to Cas’s eyes.

“You don’t make it sound very cool.”

“No, it’s just. Firefighter. ‘S pretty hot.” Dean says, and licks his lips. “I mean, I mean! Temperature. Like, ‘cause of the flames and stuff.”

“Right,” Cas says, and he’s finding it hard to follow Dean’s train of thought, especially when his eyes are following Dean’s mouth.

Dean clears his throat. “Well, then. What about you?”

“What about me what?”

 “What’s your story?”

Cas smiles. “It’s nothing like yours.”

“Still, it’s gotta be something, to merit a black eye like that.”

“No, it’s just– some men were harassing me and my date, so I stood up and confronted them. Which turned into an argument, which turned into a fistfight.”

“You and your date,” Dean repeats. He licks his lips. “Why were they harassing you?”

“My date was a man.”

“ _Oh_.” Dean sits up straighter.

“Is that a problem?”

“No– no! I mean. Um. I’m also– that is, I– uh. I’m bi.”

“I see.”

“I’ve never said that before. Out loud. Or, you know, to anyone.” Dean is examining his bruised knuckles with sudden interest.

Cas feels a sudden pressure on his chest. That’s- that’s big, and they’re just two strangers with blood on their lips.

“You mean,” he says. “You mean you haven’t-”

“No, I haven’t, that’s what I just…” Dean takes a deep breath. “My dad was a Marine and, and, and, I like girls, so. It’s not. You know. A problem.” He waves his hands in the air, aimlessly, and then lets them fall.

“I,” Cas says. He thinks about what fifteen-year-old Castiel would have wanted to hear, when he first came to terms with it. “Thank you. For telling me.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, “whatever.” A long pause. “Shit, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be dumping this on you. I don’t even know you.”

“You could,” Cas says, because he’s just been in a barfight and there’s adrenaline in his veins. “If you wanted to, that is.”

Dean looks up. Swallows. “Uh. So, the barfight. What about your date?”

“Oh, he got home safely.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Well, are you going to see him again?”

“Oh,” Cas says. He looks at Dean, at his bruised face and bright eyes, at the red of his knuckles and the pink of his lips. “No,” he decides, in that moment. “No, he was boring. Talked about art history for half the date. And, of course, left after the barfight.”

Dean laughs. “Shoulda come to my bar.”

“Maybe next time I will.”

They look at each other, and the look in Dean’s eyes scares and exhilarates him – much like a barfight. Dean leans in, and then he hesitates, and then Cas leans in the rest of the way.

Busted lips make it difficult to kiss, but they try anyway.

“Uh,” Dean says, laughing. His breath puffs warm against Cas’s cheek. “How about we wait until after our lips heal to do this.”

“That might be a while.”

“I can be patient,” Dean says. He takes Cas’s good hand in his, and this time it’s definitely not for a handshake. It feels more like– like something is starting. Something good. Something big. Brobdingnagian, maybe.

**Author's Note:**

> crossposted on [tumblr](http://shootingstarcas.tumblr.com/post/107373877276/brobdingnagian-1-2k-on-ao3-from-the-tumblr)
> 
> usually i recommend music with a piece, but i mostly listened to [water me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFtMl-uipA8) by FKA twigs on repeat while writing this. which is of little to no relevance. so, you know, great song, but.
> 
> thanks [tasha](http://kraziiisme.tumblr.com/)! also she reminds me that brobdingnagian is a rather unusual word. so:
> 
> brobdingnagian-  
> /ˌbräbdiNGˈnaɡēən/  
> gigantic, colossal. the term originates in jonathan swift's Gulliver's Travels, when the eponymous Gulliver visits the land of Brobdingnag, populated by giants known as Brobdingnagians.


End file.
